


Twice Upon the Doctor Falls

by ElectricKettle (DaLaRi)



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gallifreyan Society is Pretty Fucked Up, Happy Ending, M/M, Takes Place During The Doctor Falls, The Explanation for the Writers' Homophobia Is Sadly In Universe Homophobia, Twelve and Missy's Relationship is Complicated
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-06 16:05:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16835962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaLaRi/pseuds/ElectricKettle
Summary: There's a moment where the silence, the discomfort breaks, and the Master's words come pouring out like liquid fire, greek fire, flaming fuel, but the Master's really done with not talking about caring by this point. He wants to cut into the Doctor with truth for once, for the Doctor to see the Master's bruised and beating heart so that maybe, for once, the Master can be the one getting the closure. It's probably his fault for assuming that any could exist at all.A multi-chapter fic with a happy ending.





	Twice Upon the Doctor Falls

Eventually, the Master runs out of steam, and he says "Yes, fuck it, I loved you then. I wanted to run away with you, I wanted the whole damn universe and everything you had promised me in it, but then time and space happened."

The Doctor is standing stock still.

"And you ran and I kept killing people and it’s so much fun, Doctor, so _easy_ , so simple, much simpler than being at the end of my _fucking_ rope seeing the woman I regenerate into getting cow eyes from you, so yes, I fucking wanted this, but it was always another woman and I always was the other man and, Doctor, you never _looked_ at me like that, and it killed me that you might have, at some point, once. before," he gestures, "all of this time and blood between us."

And the Doctor reaches out to him, reaches out a hand like he has done before to Missy, and the Master miserably wipes his eyes with harsh fingertips like the tears are someone else's fault, and takes it. And the Doctor holds his hand for a moment, swipes his thumb over the Master’s knuckles and says, gently and softly urgent in the way that Twelve always has, "Maybe not. Not at the beginning. But I’ve gotten so old, Master, we’ve both gotten so old," the Master's face is falling and the Doctor's pace is picking up, worry and frenzy at the edge of it, but it's not enough, "and it doesn’t matter anymore. I want you by me, it’s all I've ever wanted, even if that was true at the beginning--"

"Do you know how hard it was for me," the Master interrupts, pulling lightly as if to twist his hand away, "seeing the only thing you wanted in the universe standing next to yet another woman. When I met Jack Harkness, the man who couldn’t die, I thought _maybe_ he was one of your more well-loved companions, for a brief moment I _hoped_ , but he was just as stuck in this place as I was. As I am."

"Master I--"

"You leave a trail of broken hearts wherever you go, Doctor. And for whatever miserable pale accomplishment it is, mine was the first, and the loudest, to break."

The Doctor tightens his grip on the Master’s hand. His voice is excruciatingly soft, afraid. Unbelieving, almost, at the edges of it. "Please don't go."

The Master slips his hand free, turns away regardless. "See you in another life, Doctor."

\---

And the Doctor and Missy watch the Master walk off into the woods in the direction of the lifts.

"Do you remember where he goes-"

Missy's voice is soft. "I don't think you want to hear this."

The Doctor turns to her. "Please. Missy. tell me what I think is going to happen isn’t--"

"He’s going to turn put sonic setting he has to half power and turn it on. And regenerate."

The Doctor's voice shakes as he speaks, turning his voice harsh. "And that’s-"

"That’s when I become me, yes. And I promptly forget. Perks of a paradox. But all the hate, all the loathing, and the pain, it slips right off me this time. Because I know, I know that this time I set things right in the end. Of course, I won’t know what I mean by 'things' for a long time but--"

"I’m sorry, I have to go after him-" He's half wild, half nauseated. His voice is too loud, when did he get so _loud_ or was he always this brash and idiotic.

"Doctor." She doesn't need to say _it doesn't work._ Her standing there is enough proof. He tries not to scoff at her. It's not her fault.

"Please." His voice is too soft, too wet. Is he going to cry?

"I can’t hold off the Cybermen, and he _lives_ -"

"He doesn’t, though, does he?" There's a shaking blind anger tipping up the ends of the Doctor's sentences, breeding seething self-loathing in his voice as he points after the Master. "He goes back to his TARDIS and induces a regeneration. He kills himself. He _died_ because of me once before and I've managed to do it again. It’s been thousands, or millions, of years depending on what parts of my life you count, and I still can't get this stupid part _right!_ 2000 years of my life and the death of my planet and their _rules,_ " he taps at his temple "Missy, are still in my _head_!"

"What on earth are you talking about." Missy's voice is quiet, hushed, telling him to hush with her tone. It's dangerous to shout, but he can hardly process this. She can't have forgotten. Did the Master not know this? Did the master not know _why_? He's got a hand to his mouth and is looking out into the woods. The Master is long gone, but he looks after him, searching for the weird blond hair. This Master wasn't blond and he's having a hard time remembering when it happened. "Doctor," Missy is prompting him again. He shakes his head, half wanting to forestall this conversation, but he's never been good at not talking, especially not when his world, one of the constants of his world, is falling apart. He can almost smell the orange chalk on the wind, can almost see the domes. He closes his eyes, presses his fingertips to them, doubles over briefly, almost a bow, as if he could get more blood to his head so he could _think_.

"I'm sure you remember, when we were kids at the Academy they would tell us, warn us, not to 'go on bonding with another Time Lord when your biological genders are at a match.'" Air quotes don't suit him, and he drops his hands, but Missy's mouth is a remembering about-to-lash-out slash across her face. She remembers. "The threats they made would be different every time, but they were some of the worse ones we heard for things that weren't crimes against Time itself." Missy's eyes are going vacant, the fidgeting of her hands smoothing out into cut-glass movements in the way only painful memories can achieve. He'd stop if he could, but then he'd just have brought it up for nothing. He takes a breath.

"You could get cast out. Your TARDIS would be killed. Not could be. _Would_ be. They stressed that every time. They said," no air quotes this time, but he fidgets with his cuffs to stop himself, "you couldn't be a Time Lord and love a Time Lord of your gender, and, well," he gestures at nothing as if they were on Gallifrey and he could _point_ and have it mean something, "we'd already looked into the Untempered Schism, it was done, it was over, we could feel the timelines and listen to what they told us. And for me, it told me, and I think you heard it too, that I was a Time Lord or I was dead. There were a few other options, smaller ones that only showed up if you listened for them, but they were lives that led me far away from you, and the timelines also told us that we," he gestures, and Missy looks away from him like he can't see the tears climbing down her cheeks, " would be something to one another. Farming was one of them, it told me, and, well, I've never liked farming. Had no feel for it." His smile is hardly a smile even by his own standards, but Missy makes a face like she'd smile if he hadn't just ripped the most forgettable horrible memories of their respective lives out on the table of memory, and suddenly he can't look at her. "We were so young, then. Didn't know any better than to listen. Well, you did. You were always the smarter of us two." Missy still isn't looking at him, so he looks at the floor, and decides he may as well tear into the point, no point hurting them both any more than they had to, no point dragging his hearts across the dirt like getting them infected could fix any of this.

"And I've been an idiot, more than that, for _lifetimes_. When it came to how I thought of myself, I learned better and then learned worse again, learned better and then worse, but that was with humans and aliens, and you know that being in love is different when you're with another Time Lord, I thought," Missy flinches at the words _in love_ , and the Doctor's mouth keeps going even though he can see the flinch, maybe if he talks fast enough she won't have time to stand up and leave, and the distance between them seems insurmountable as it was when he first met her this regeneration, because he's still dragging their hearts through the dirt and he hasn't tried to remember this in so long, and of _course_ Missy remembers, "and I was waiting because, when you're growing up, when _I_ was growing up on Gallifrey, I learned from watching others, and from what I saw when I was at the Academy with you, you _learn_ that if you wait and dodge the watching eyes for long enough, if the universe and luck and chance are on your side, there's a point in your regenerations where you are one gender and the person you love is another and you can just take the chance while you have it, everything you're forbidden from wanting there for the taking right in front of you, if you can just wait long enough. I knew people who it took three regenerations, and I remember thinking that seemed insurmountable, but when they regenerated they were the same genders again and no one could say anything, they were allowed to live without being bothered. That's all I wanted for us. Cushy Academy jobs and a joint TARDIS to travel in. Before the War, before anything else that happened to us." His hands are trembling faintly. Missy's face is pale, and her mouth working silently, half open, as if trying to ask him to stop. She sat on the crumbling wall at some point, and he could end this now, but the Master's newly-blond head has disappeared into the woods and he can't make himself _stop talking_. There is wet at the corners of his eyes, and he wants to run his hands through his hair but he can't because his arms are still paralyzed trying to point at things that only the two of them can remember, and tears taste like Time now and he can't remember the last time he felt so _much_.

"Twelve hundred years, eleven regenerations, and still I thought it would hurt the least if I just _waited_. The first few times, every time we regenerated I thought maybe it would be then, but..." He takes a step towards Missy like he would reach for her hand, but he hesitates, pulls his hand back, looks at her. " Since when has the universe ever been kind to us. It's our job, or at least my job, your part-time job, to be kind when the universe isn't." Missy is looking at him again, not at his eyes but at his throat, over his head, anywhere but his face, and she needs to _understand_. "I loved him when he was Blondie pre-blonde. I loved him before, I love him now, and although what you and I have built isn't a romance," Missy laughs, wetly, harshly, sharply, "as it were, I always believed that when or if you ever wanted it to be, it could be. I do love the version of him that's out in those woods, though, and," the Doctor swallows, "though I'm thick as a fucking planet, I'm starting to grasp that he might love me."

Missy, eyes closed, face wet, nods, and refuses to look up. He reaches out, dancing in and out with indecision for a moment before deciding, and rests his cold fingertips on her wrist.

"Thank you."

He withdraws his hand, stands still for a moment until she meets his gaze reproachfully, a _go on then_ clear in her wet reddened eyes, and, needing no further prompting, he takes off into the woods after Blondie, at as full a tilt as he can manage. He has to stop to double over two-thirds of the way to the lifts, regeneration energy streaming from his fingers as he fights a shout back from between his teeth as he shakes off his regeneration energy and keeps running.

\---

When he gets to the spot in the woods, the lift has just arrived and the Master is bracing himself to go in. 

The Doctor's voice is breezy, though his breathing is clearly labored. " I wouldn’t do that if I were you."

The Master tenses, huffs a breath out through clenched teeth. "You always knew how to appear when least wanted, Doctor."

"Please," the Doctor scoffs, then stops and repeats lowly, almost a whisper, voice a whisper just shy of cracking. His hair is a mess, and there are twigs in it when the Master turns back to look at him. His voice is like a punch to the gut. "Please."

The Master grits his teeth, doesn't have to ask what the Doctor means. Drawbacks of hanging around with future regenerations, distinct reductions in the number of things that have the ability to come as a surprise. He doesn't intend to let the Doctor off easy because of it. "Why."

Missy has caught up with them, in earshot and not quite hidden, but neither of them is in a position to notice.

"Because. Because I’ve, I've been so... _stupid."_ This regeneration's sense of humor breaks the Master's heart, and he braces as the Doctor continues. "We’ve been doing this, this back and forth, this will-they-won't they, for so long, and I keep making stupid mistakes. I never reach out when I should-- no actually I do, that's what's stupid about it, but I never reached out in a way that can help. I should have told you millennia ago, but Master, from the absolute moment that we stepped off our Looms, the very shape of Time told us the two of us would be something important to each other. I was wrong to try and change it, stupid to try and wait it out, at the time for the sake of, what, propriety?"

The Doctor's voice is scorning the idea, but the Master still flinches. Does he have to hear the same old drivel from the Doctor too, the Doctor, the traditionalist who always thinks he can pick and choose what parts of the old traditions to keep and which to leave behind? The Doctor, who could steal a TARDIS but who, apparently, couldn't look twice at the Master for millennia? The Doctor, who the Master has loved since he was barely sixty years old?

"I was wrong to believe it any of it, even at the beginning when we were babies, I should have trusted you, and how I felt, I had no choice in what they said to us, when they started, but I had a choice in letting it push you away, and I made the wrong choice. I made stupid choices, again and again, yes of course when Gallifrey existed," he takes a breath, the Master still not having turned the whole way to look at him, but the Master sneaks a look at him. He's looking at the ground, "but especially when it didn't anymore." The Master knows they're thinking the same thing, about the year that never was, about the Valiant and the year he almost destroyed the universe for the umpteenth time. And refused to regenerate, and died. He remembers dying in the Doctor's arms, remembers thinking it was worth it. He doesn't regret it, even now. Regardless of everything that happened afterward, he still doesn't.

"It took me so _so_ long to realize what I had in you and then you were gone." There's a choked warmth to the Doctor's voice that terrifies the Master, terrifies him because it reminds him of being young and so in love with the Doctor he can hardly stand to be in the same room as him even though they're best friends, and listening to the Doctor sound like this is always staring hope in the face only to find one second later that it's conditional, under unbearable conditions. And it's the Schism all over, every time, and he sways as if to lean into the warmth in spite of himself because he's always been hundreds of things between the two of them, but he's never been the one who runs away. "I waited too long when we had the chance, followed old rules out of fear, and when I couldn't think of anything else to do when Gallifrey was dead and you were alive, I thought we had no choice but to rebuild it as it had been."

The Master remembers the desperation in that long thin (beloved) face on the Valiant, the begging, the unconscionable nonsense of his ideas, as if he'd be talked into building another one of the society that drove him mad, for anybody, even for the Doctor. That _that_ could be what he made of their reunion. The ability to rebuild Gallifrey. To bring back what was left of the Time Lords. He remembers, and remembers choosing to spit in the face of that dream and what the Doctor had meant by it, remembers dying, truly dying, in the Doctor's arms.

The Doctor’s been stepping up to him as he’s been speaking, the Master turning a little with every step in spite of himself, watching him watch the Master as he approaches. This face was beautiful. It had such kind eyes. That's the thought that shocks him out of this, realizing he's thinking with everything but his brain once again, just as with every time he's faced the Doctor and been thrown into the void by his appeals. "You’ve always been too taken with the rules you chose to keep, Doctor, willing to leave us or destroy us so you could have your little adventures, your morality. How can I know you won’t use me, discard me like one of your," he spits the word, "companions." How he hates them, monstrous humans that have eaten up the Doctor's time for millennia, slept in his TARDIS and loved him as he was shunted from one of the dark places of the universe to another.

"Ohh, no no no," the Doctor is close enough to touch him now, and he reaches out to barely brush the sleeve of Master's jacket. Time Lords don't get gooseflesh, but something at the skin of his neck tingles with it, and he half turns, intending to turn him away, but it’s that old familiar presence of a hand in his hair and he yearns _so badly,_ it had been _millennia_ , and he feels his hearts stutter in spite of the cruelty with which he shuts down his hope, his blinding leaping hope. The Doctor's voice can be so soft in this body, almost a whisper, almost a drawl. "I treasure my companions, Master, but they've all just died so easily. I'm too old for this, I don't know how much more of them I can live through. They're so…" his thumb swipes back and forth against the Master’s neck, and his eyes go liquid and painful trying to find the word, "so fragile. You and I are both Time Lords," the Doctor steps in closer, and he says Time Lords, not how the rest of the Universe does it, like it's a race and that Gallifrey only lost the number of Academy graduates when it burned. He says it like they said it at the Academy, pride of place and ozone and the yoke of regeneration settled around your neck and across your shoulders like a noose. He feels the funny little feeling over his right heart again, at the back of his neck where the cold softness of the Doctor's hand is resting, fingertips half carded through his hair. He _missed_ this. "When we're destroyed, we're destroyed by destroying each other. " He steps around the Master, who's still distracted, always half-enchanted, to come to stand, with one hand still on the nape of the Master’s neck, between him and the door of the lift. The Master feels terribly heartbroken and very stupid. But the Doctor's hand doesn't drop when he's between the Master and the door. Instead, he brushes closer, and the Master's heart is doing somersaults trying to explain this, trying to keep hope from blowing the circuit he has it trapped in. He's trying so desperately not to lean into the touch. he's failing, but he hasn't realized yet.

"Can you promise me that this won’t go absolutely terribly."

The Doctor scoffs lightly, right into his face. The Master adores his accent. "Of course I can't. You know I can't." He's tearing up, god fucking dammit, and he tries to find anywhere to look that isn’t this face that he already adores, that uniquely ordered singing mind right at the edge of his brain.

"But I can promise," the Doctor’s face is dancing closer bit by bit, "that I can make this worth your while." There's a tease in his voice, and _go_ _d_ , that's always been the Master's job.

"Oh, fuck it, aright," the Master says, voice cracking, and pulls the Doctor to him by his waist and kisses him.

There's a moment where there's only electricity and the Doctor's mouth against his, but then the Doctor makes a sound in low the back of his throat, a sound that says _'f_ _inally'_ and 'god i’ve been a fool' and ' _yes_ ' and the Master just leans further into him and kisses him harder because, yes, yes he _has_ been a fool, but _god_ the Master loves him. And for all that Time continues thrumming in their skulls it feels like time stops, that they just get to stand there like that, kissing each other like they've been doing so their whole lives, drinking in each other’s energy and holding each other's faces and hair and letting the thrum of not-quite-manic-energy settle over their skins at the dizzying realization that they can _have_ this, that they can kiss each other until both of their respiratory bypasses kick in, and they remember they’re in a forest, remember the Cybermen, remember the ship and the black hole and the impossible plan closing in on them. And they look up to see Missy watching the two of them, tears still on her face but looking bored with them, and she looks at them drolly for a moment before she winces and a faint smile freezes on her face.

"Oh. Well. I’ve never had the experience of being a paradox before," she says, and then time seizes around her and she crumples.

The two of them have diagnostic scans on her in a moment, the Doctor pulling up a stasis setting as the Master gets specific with his diagnostic scan, time pressure driving them away from the intensity of their previous moment, of the fact that the Doctor's mouth is red and slightly bitten and his hair is standing on the ends of their ridiculous handsome waves and the Master is vaguely sure that he looks only marginally better. He flicks through his settings as fast as he can toggle them, refining, searching, tersely telling the doctor frequencies to add to his stasis lock. As Missy stabilizes and the pressure on their eardrums faintly releases, he sees the Doctor watching him, not necessarily assessing him, just watching. He doesn't really know what to do with that, indecision twitching his mouth. The Doctor smiles faintly at him, a small thing, blink-and-you'll-miss-it quick that feels like it's only for him. He cn't help his incredulous little grin.

"Well done with the scanning," the Doctor says.

"Well," the Master teases, already pushing. "I’m used to dodging paradoxes." He doesn't know what to do with this new thing, so he does what he always does. He wrecks it before he has a chance to get his hopes up.

"Ah." the Doctor acknowledges, look of discomfort but no further heckling, no memory stirred behind his eyes. Accepts it. Doesn't retread old painful ground. It's terrifying not to have the pushback he's used to, and he winces a smile in the Doctor's direction before he decides, you know what, he's deciding to like it. Terrifying lack of pushback be damned, he likes this. Not harming each other. He's managed to not harm the Doctor in the past, and making a habit of it would be exhilaratingly nice. Not harming the Doctor. Maybe doing the opposite of harming the Doctor every once in a while, he thinks, and has to stop his own startled flush. He glances at the Doctor, who's looking at him carefully, and smiles, deliberately genuine, faintly uncomfortable. Unbeknownst to him, a smile of his that the Doctor knows and loves. Something in the Doctor's face relaxes, and he grins back at the Master, just a bit lopsided and breathless and _so_ so genuine, and the Master adores it with a fierce immediateness. That cinches it. Not only does the Master love the Doctor, he's absolutely in love with this particular face. All other faces immediately take a backseat to this one, because he loves it.

But something in the Master wants to ask if this is age, if time has gentled the Doctor into someone who could very well have been unrecognizable to the man the Master knew who was so sure he was the smartest man on Gallifrey, who thought that he thought he could fix it from the age of 60 years old. _How old are you,_ he wants to ask, _w_ _hat have you seen that changed you? What did I miss? How can I follow you?_

But then they hear the thumping and crunching of Cybermen feet, and while the Doctor keeps his stasis setting trained firmly on Missy, the Master lifts her in one go and swears in every language he can think of the whole way back to the farmhouse, stringing between unflattering comments about Cybermen, existence, and space in general, about how 'the Doctor’s the tall gangly one, maybe he should be the one carrying the body.'

But the Doctor just laughs at that teasingly, relief and something bright pouring off him even though the Master knows the smell of regeneration energy and death coming from that tall form is getting stronger. The Doctor is running a bit ahead, constantly checking the forest and the readout of the sonic, but he keeps looking back at the Master with something so indescribably bright in his eyes.

"What?" the Master asks. If this is something that he's doing he wants to know how he can replicate it. If it's because of the running or the Cybermen, he wants to be able to tell the Doctor in detail where he can shove his love of 'adventures.'

The Doctor laughs. "Oh it's nothing. I just I always knew that at one point we’d end up having this conversation," he says, and the Master can't help it. He throws his head back too and laughs, tries not to clench his teeth around how _good_ it feels to actually be laughing again.


End file.
